Animation, Fabrication, Photography Reflections upon the Intersecting Practices of Sub-Saharan Artists within the Moving Image Paula Callus all photos © and courtesy of the artists nimation draws upon a range of artistic prac- fixed in time, in this instance the camera makes visible the pas- tice: illustration, painting, sculpture, choreog- sage of time and process integral to all animation by the jux- raphy, and photography. This assemblage of taposition of photographic images in succession. There is a forms is bound by the photographic as it effec- paradoxical condition that animation reveals through the per- tively captures the sequence of images. There sistence of vision: the reliance upon renditions of still images are a number of different ways in which a in order to make visible movement (Hernandez 2007). It is range of African animation artists engage with or utilize photog- somewhere within the interstices of these images that the art- Araphy within their practice, illustrating the range and scope of ist’s fabrication of animation becomes complexly intertwined methods that are employed. By focusing upon Kenyan Ng’endo with photography. Unlike live-action film, where it is possible Mukii’s explorations of animated documentary such as Yellow to conceal this “dormant” contradiction through the automated Fever (2012), Ethiopian Ezra Wube’s portfolio of animated paint- recording of these images, in animation process artists are con- ings, and South African artists Mocke Jansen van Veuren and tinuously faced with the interplay between stillness and the Theresa Collins’s time-lapse experiments, this article explores appearance of moving image as they capture and compose the photographic practice within African animation. These artists sequential assembly of images. have been selected to demonstrate the range of such ideas and practices explored within animation rather than to offer specific DISCONNECTIONS AND INTERSECTIONS IN DISCOURSE representations of African animation. Embedded within these Historically the relationship between animation and photog- animations one can identify the themes of migration, displace- raphy has involved many levels of intersection, whether at the ment, identity, interpersonal relationships, local narrative, and moment of fabrication, manipulation, or rendition. These have social and political commentary. They challenge the fixed con- had varying degrees of visibility, which may account for their con- ventions of still and moving image and create works that prompt ceptual separation and why they are often placed within differ- the viewer to reconsider photography in light of fabrication and ent discourses. Furthermore, the hegemonic effect of Disney in a manipulation. This interplay between photographic “realism” transnational context has had the unfortunate result of animation and fabricated renditions of the image within animation gen- typically being associated with children’s popular entertainment erate an aesthetic diversity that cannot be easily placed within and the consequential association with European fairy tales and rigid categories of the moving image. the fantastical. Discourse on animation from the African conti- Animation as a medium incorporates a range of aesthetic nent is scarce, with only a few key scholars directing their attention devices including, in these cases, intervals of photographic pix- to sub-Saharan animation artists at large (Bazzoli 2003; Bendazzi elated1 performances, montage sequences of archival images 2004; Callus 2010a, 2010b, 2012; Convents 2003, 2014; Edera 1993, embedded as a projection, animated paintings as cathartic per- 1996).2 Within Western animation discourse, it is possible to iden- formance, collage, time-lapse, and moving puppets. Unlike typi- tify both a narrative that positioned a range of animation genres cal discourses on the photographic image to capture a moment as particularly suited to the depiction of the unreal and a distinct 58 | african arts AUTUMN 2015 VOL. 48, NO. 3 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00239 by guest on 27 September 2021 callus2.indd 58 28/05/2015 11:40 AM 1 A photograph of the Congolese animator Jean Michel Kibushi taken in 1988 in Kinshasa, using a Bolex camera for under-the-camera animation. 2 A still image from Kenneth Coker’s Iwa (2009) depicting the artisan removing his mask. interest in the fabricated qualities that made up the animated guises and is typically explored within “animation documentary.” moving image (Wells 1997, 1998; Moritz 1988; Furniss 1998). Its For example, in 2D animation a purposeful aesthetic resemblance aesthetic form tends to overtly declare the image as a construct in and conceptual connection between the referent in a photograph contrast to the indexical qualities of the photograph.3 In contrast, and the drawn image is possible though rotoscoping,4 as in the past discourses on photography and documentary film have posi- case of South African Jacquie Trowell’s Beyond Freedom (2005). tioned the technology and its aesthetic as evidence of the trace and Furthermore, even within photographic images the bond to a pre- of its fidelity to the real, whereby the artist’s hand was rendered existing referent is also much more complex.5 As Tagg identifies, invisible (Barthes 1982, Bazin 1960). The indexical “nature” of the every photograph is the result of specific and, in every sense, signifi- image was discussed as evidence of the pre-photographic referent, cant distortions which render its relations to any prior reality deeply binding it to a fixed time, space, and subject in an a priori “reality” problematic and raise the question of the determining level of the (Barthes 1982). However, animation does not preclude a relation- material apparatus and of the social practices within which photogra- ship to the notional referent that may be present in a variety of phy takes place (Tagg 1988:2). VOL. 48, NO. 3 AUTUMN 2015 african arts | 59 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00239 by guest on 27 September 2021 callus2.indd 59 28/05/2015 11:40 AM 3 A still image from the opening sequence to Ng’endo Mukii’s Yellow Fever (2012) as the artist gives an account of her memory of the mkorogo woman braiding her hair. In 2014, for example, the Lagos Photo Photography Festival Met (2009) the artist combines pictorial elements as “objects of in Nigeria alluded to the strategies of contemporary artists who memory” to call upon the discourses of representation in docu- sought to expand beyond with the dichotomy of fiction and doc- mentary photography as a record of personal and/or collective umentary by theming the event under the title, “Staging Reality, memory (Barthes 1982, Nora 1989). Documenting Fiction.” It is also possible to talk of animation that appears entirely pho- tographic in rendition, albeit spatially and temporally affected. CONCEALING AND REVEALING THE PHOTOGRAPHIC In Somehow (2009), by the Kenyan multimedia art collective WITHIN ANIMATION known as Just a Band and the journalist photographer Boniface Perhaps the most overt use of the camera and photographic Mwangi, the artists call for reflection upon the Kenyan post- process within a genre of animation would be in 3D stop-motion, election violence in 2008 by overtly drawing upon photographic visible in the animations of Congolese Jean Michel Kibushi’s tropes.6 This limited animation presents movement on screen Prince Loseno (2004), Malian Kadiatou Konate’s L’enfant Terri- as a state of change between two still photographic images: the ble (1993), and Nigerois Moustapha Alassane’s Samba le Grande photojournalistic capture of people during the post-election vio- (1977) and Kokoa (1985). Typically within this genre the animator lence and the same picture with a rupture consisting of cut-out uses puppets and miniature sets to stage the performance that is “Hollywood smiles” that are seamlessly positioned to replace the controlled through incremental movement and captured pho- mouths of the subjects depicted in these images. The use of com- tographically frame by frame (Fig. 1). Alassane’s Kokoa (1985), bined photographic references is also visible in South African for example, uses a colorful cast of puppets as anthropomorphic artists Theresa Collins and Mocke J. van Veuren’s collaborative frogs, chameleons, and leopard characters in a Kokowa “tradi- time-lapse piece minutes 2010: time/bodies/rhythm/Johannesburg tional” wrestling match. There are cases where artists can adopt (2010). This short sequence of affected digital moving images a similar process but may choose to incorporate found objects, is discussed here alongside animation, as the film engages with real actors, and sets in combination with puppets, as in the South discourses of animation to illustrate the control and interjec- African piece And There in the Dust (2001) by Lara Foot New- tion of the artists as they manipulate the sequence of still images ton and Gerhard Marx. The controlled and incremental change through a juxtaposition of spaces achieved through digital com- of three-dimensional objects in front of the lens is mirrored in positing.7 Although this type of semi-observational mode of still “under-the-camera” animation that uses an assortment of mate- and moving image can readily be positioned as “essentially an rials usually layered on two-dimensional planes. Whether the act of non-intervention” (Sontag 1973:8), van Veuren’s interest artist uses sand on glass, paint on a canvas, or prepared